MS would have to ship 11.55m consoles this year. While it may seem like a reasonable ammount, the X360 is tracking below YoY so far and I don't think Natal or a Pricecut would provide the boost needed to reach it.

Not really, a 47 million looks better =)

Seems unlikely to me. According the VGC, the 360 would need to sell about 13 million units. According to the numbers you posted for last year, that's about 30% more than they've done in the past 2 years. I don't know where that extra 30% is going to come from.

There was a Halo game released this year and that didn't sky rocket sales past what it did the previous year. Gears 2 came out and that didn't do it either. Alan Wake, Crack Down 2, Splinter Cell... I don't think any of these games or the other announced games that i'm aware of are going to push it to a 30% increase in sales. On top of that the global economy is still in the crapper.

Why do you people insist on ignoring the possibility of an x360 relaunch? A relaunch with enough marketing behind it will allow MS to atleast ship 50 mill units before years end.

Do you honestly believe MS wont have the largest marketing spend ever for any of their products in recent years? That coupled with pricecuts and game lineups will create a dominoeffect that will allow MS to atleast make retaliers buy their stuff in order to reach that milestone.

I dont have much faith in NATAL being all that amazing, but the marketing spend will allow MS to give that appearence so enough people will buy into it.

Alot of people completely underestimated the effect a relaunch of PS3 would have, and make no mistake, x360+relaunch+natal+pricecut+marketing muscle will have a significant impact.

He's not crazy. Overly optimistic maybe but not crazy.

See, the problem is that most people can't see past their OWN feelings about Project Natal. Despite the repeated rips we STILL see on the Wii, this holiday proved that people in general are still buying the thing up in ridiculous droves.

Here's the REALITY, folks: IF (and that's a big if) Project Natal can find a 'casual killer app', then it and the 360 will likely have its best holiday yet.

I say a 'casual killer app' because it won't be a hit this year with core gamers AT ALL. There hasn't been enough time to develop a game that would appeal to us enough to get past our skepticism. But a hot item with the casuals is unstoppable and every casual or non-gamer that I have personally shown Project Natal to has been FASCINATED with it already. A casual killer app will be very hard to come across, so we'll have to simply wait and see what MS and 3rd parties announce later in the year.

So, if you couldn't tell already, I voted for option 4.

I agree with Darth Tigris, the OP is extremely optimistic. If everything went to absolute plan for Microsoft then it is possible, in all likelyhood though 47-48 million is more realistic estimate given the information we currently have.

I highly doubt it.

Depends how well Natal works for them, along with the size of pricecut.

Its not possible, you are crazy, we will be super nice and go with inflated numbers, 160,000 a week that is about 7.6 million, that puts them at about 45 million on the high side, and these numbers are about 80-100 thousand on the high side a month, no doubt 360 will have another great year, they always do, but 50 million is crazy, I like your thinking though

Its possible, though we won't know for sure until we actually hit the release of Natal. This year they have an Xbox 360 slim (likely), Natal, 16 or so games for Natal (same as launch) and Halo: Reach which by all accounts looks like the penultimate Halo experience.

If all goes well, we could see the Xbox 360 board a new product life-cycle that causes a second peak in 2011 or so.

Enitrely possible needs a few things to come together to make it happen. Without my crystal ball I would probably be more inclined to go 48 tops but if Natal proves to be close to what is hyped it could blow past that. Even the 48 would need real effort to achieve though.